


Get Through It

by nubianamy



Series: (What It Looks Like and) What It Is [7]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode: s01e09 The Short List, Implied Relationships, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nubianamy/pseuds/nubianamy
Summary: Josh confronts Leo with circulating rumors about him, and discovers even more potentially disastrous information.
Relationships: Abbey Bartlet/Jed Bartlet/Leo McGarry
Series: (What It Looks Like and) What It Is [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021147
Kudos: 10





	Get Through It

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from s01e09 The Short List:
> 
> BARTLET  
> He knows?
> 
> LEO  
> We think so.
> 
> BARTLET  
> We?
> 
> LEO  
> Josh has it.
> 
> BARTLET  
> What does Josh say?
> 
> LEO  
> Get through it.
> 
> BARTLET  
> Josh is a smart guy.
> 
> LEO  
> No sir. Josh is a young guy.
> 
> BARTLET  
> We used to be too.

“Hey, Leo.” Josh poked his head into the Mural Room. “Is it true? The President is meeting with Mendoza about the nomination?” 

“Yeah.” Leo was too distracted even to shrug.

"What happened to Harrison?"

He gathered up his papers. “We’ll see how it goes. Sam and Toby are in there with him.” 

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

Leo gave him a quick glance. “Walk with me to my office.” 

Josh drew closer, keeping his voice soft. “No, this is an in-office conversation. Or maybe an outside one.”

He nodded. Now Josh had his full attention. “We’ll keep it in-office for now. I’ve got to be here for Mendoza.” 

When he closed the door to Leo’s office, Leo was frowning at him.

“All right, I’ve got less than five minutes. What’s this about?”

Josh decided whatever he ultimately said to Leo, it couldn’t be as weird as the conversation he’d already had with the President. “Uh... somebody knows something about what’s going on in the White House. I mean something specific.” 

Leo’s nod was slower this time, but his grim expression hadn’t changed. “Do you know they know, or are you speculating about what they know?” 

“Looks like it's more the former than the latter. Toby wants me to go on a witch hunt, and I told Toby if he wants to know who’s doing what around here, he would have to ask them himself.” Josh sighed, rubbing the sore spot on his neck. “Except I didn’t know if I could talk to him about… you know, what the President told me.”

“And what exactly would that be?”

“You know.” Josh made a gesture that was the opposite of  _ exactly _ . “The… relationship you told the President he could tell me. About you.” 

“Toby is not aware of my history with the President, no.”

“With—“ Josh stopped breathing for a moment. “What do you mean?”

Leo’s eyes tracked the question for about two seconds before he refocused on Josh again, glaring. “No, you said he told you.”

“About you and the  _ First Lady.” _ Josh took a step back and grappled for a hold on the desk. “Not about… you and him?” It came out as a quiet question, but when Leo finally nodded, he wanted to yell it twenty more times. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Leo remained stoic. “What do you want me to say? The President gets to decide when things like this—“

“No, I mean…” He heard how frantic he sounded, but if there was anywhere he could be frantic in the White House and not worry about repercussions, it was in Leo’s office. “Why didn’t you tell me about  _ you, _ when you convinced me to invite Sam to join the campaign?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t, Josh," he sighed. "Would it have made a difference?”

He scanned the office, but his eyes didn’t take in a damn thing. “God, Leo, is that even a real question? Of course it would have made a difference. This whole thing is so—and now I find out that  _ you’re— _ when you didn’t say anything about it before?”

Leo narrowed his eyes. “I can see there’s a reason why Sam writes our speeches, and not you.”

Josh blew out a breath. “Oh, yeah, no, that would be terrible.”

“So how about you elaborate on exactly what you are having trouble with here?”

“It’s just… you and _the President?”_ He didn’t have to ask Leo for permission to pace his office, but there was so little room to begin with, he felt more like a racquetball in a cardboard box. “He definitely did not mention anything about that. I mean, I spent all of last night trying to wrap my brain around the idea of you and Abbey Bartlet in a consensual relationship. Just saying it aloud feels like—I don’t know what it feels like, but I think if I said it to the First Lady, she would smack me across the face.”

“She might. Especially if she heard you going on like this.” Leo’s frown almost looked like a smile, but Josh knew better. “The President told you now for the same reason I told CJ at the beginning of the campaign. This was strategic, not personal.”

He stared at Leo. “It’s not  personal?

“It’s not that simple.” 

“It _is_ that simple,” Josh insisted. “It’s the same as what you told me. Relationships end when the campaign trail begins.”

“That’s right, and it did. Except now things are different. Seriously, you want me to say  _ no _ to the President?”

Josh paused in his confined pacing. “You don’t think you can say no?”

“No, I can say no, and I have. And right now, he’s making a good case for not saying no, he and Abbey both. Don’t assume you have all the information.”

“No, I clearly don’t!” He stared at the wall instead of at Leo, trying not to feel like a pouty kid. “I mean, how long has this been going on?”

“Before the campaign, about ten years.” Leo reached out to grab his arm on the next pass, and they both stopped where they were. “Josh, we are not here to discuss history. This is about what’s filtering through the gossip channels right now. I’ll tell you what I told CJ:  _ this _ is not something anybody is ready to deal with.”

“You think?”

“I spend a good deal of my time considering the potential repercussions."

Josh ground his teeth. “Well, you’d better get ready. My sources tell me they’ve got something, and it’s not small. Could it be this?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Not this.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because the only people who know are people I trust implicitly.” 

“Well, you’d better talk to Margaret, because she told Donna.” 

Leo nodded again. “Like I said. Believe me, I wouldn’t get very far in this job if I didn’t trust Margaret with a hell of a lot. And now Donna.”

“Oh.” He hesitated. “Sam—“

“I’m going to tell him.”

“But not  _ Toby?” _

“Josh,” Leo snapped, and Josh found himself fighting back tears. 

“You could have told me. When I went to convince Sam.” He took an exasperated step back. “It would have made a difference, to me. You could have told me.” 

He didn’t look at anybody on his way back to his office. Whatever else was going to fall on his head, it might as well come. 


End file.
